Hands off the dancers, sir.
Our latest Biglaw blind item concerns the sighting of a partner at a strip club.
Right now you’re probably thinking: yawn. A law firm partner at a strip club? As they say, it happens every day (or night — and often gets billed to “business development”).
But there are a few more details that make this item noteworthy….
Continue reading “Biglaw Blind Item: A Partner Walks Into a Strip Club….”
Our latest blind item has to do with the extracurricular activities of a prominent law professor….
'But I'm too pretty to go to jail.'
* The AT&T/T-Mobile antitrust suit is so big that not even Big Government law can handle it. The DOJ is bringing in even bigger guns with a partner from Biglaw firm Munger Tolles. [Bloomberg]
* Obama has nominated former Kozinski clerk, Paul Watford, to the Ninth Circuit. Way to go, because he’s kind of cute. Isn’t that what everyone looks for in a federal judge? [San Francisco Chronicle]
* Is Paul Ceglia’s Facebook lawsuit completely doomed? His own lawyer, Jeffrey Lake, wants to defriend him. This will be the fourth firm to dump Ceglia as a client. [Wall Street Journal]
* Blind item: which Hollywood actress is suing IMDb for $1M for revealing her true age? And we say “true age” because everyone knows that Botox knocks a few years off your face. [Reuters]
* Lindsay Lohan is due in court today for a progress report hearing, and prosecutors want to throw her in jail. Hope she’s been brushing up on her acting skills. [New York Daily News]
* Cry me a river? A Florida lawyer will be arguing before the state Supreme Court this winter over his First Amendment right to blast Justin Timberlake from his car stereo. [NBC Miami]
In an event I did a few years ago at the University of Chicago with Judge Richard Posner (check out the podcast here), Judge Posner tossed out a delicious little blind item. He mentioned a federal judge in Chicago who would fire law clerks for what she viewed as a very grave offense: splitting infinitives in written work product.
But is splitting infinitives really such a crime?
Continue reading “Grammer Pole of the Weak: Split Infinitives”
Now that Labor Day is behind us, fall is fast approaching. You can tell by the chill in the evening air.
Or is that just the cold offers we’re feeling? Last month, we asked you for stories about firms giving out cold offers to summer associates. As we explained, a “cold offer” or “fake offer” is, in the words of NALP, an employment offer made “with the understanding that the offer will not be accepted.”
This “offer,” made with a wink and a nudge, allows the employing law firm to report (and boast about) a 100 percent offer rate, when in reality it isn’t welcoming back 100 percent of its summer associates. It also has an advantage for the recipient: when she goes through 3L recruiting, she can truthfully say, “Yes, I received an offer from the firm where I summered.”
We recently heard a story about a pretty cold offer (not from summer 2011, but from not too long ago summer 2010). This summer associate, who wasn’t the most popular person in her class, received a full-time employment offer “contingent upon obtaining a federal clerkship.” Given how hard it is to land a federal judicial clerkship, that’s a pretty cold offer — especially considering that the student in question, now graduated, didn’t go to a law school known for cranking out lots of clerks.
But wait, it gets better….
With the news of 100 percent offer rates trickling in slowly but surely from many Biglaw firms, we thought that students from top-tier law schools were looking good in terms of their job prospects. Sure, summer classes were smaller this year — but offer rates at or near 100 percent are still nothing to scoff at.
Recall the dark days of summer 2009, when no-offers and cold offers were doled out in abundance. When it comes to the legal job market, maybe it does get better (as long as we don’t sink into a double-dip recession).
Could the legal economy be returning to normal? Could the dark days of indentured servitude for recent law school graduates be coming to an end?
Not so fast….
Continue reading “Top-Tier Law School Blind Item: An Associate Position, At No Cost to You!”
Do you know why people go to law school? For most people, it’s not because they “love the law” or because they want to be part of the system of justice. It’s because they want to make money. Lots and lots of dirty, sexy money.
Granted, there are easier ways to make money in this world. You could work on your jumpshot. You could do… whatever it is they do in business school, between pub crawls masquerading as “networking events.” You could choose your parents wisely.
But still, if everything works out — and I mean everything — you might make an obscene amount of money in Biglaw. So much money that you can send around messages like this to your fellow attorneys….
Continue reading “Biglaw Blind Item: In Biglaw You Deal With Big Money”
We’ve already shown you what it looks like when an associate gets laid off from a law firm. It’s not pretty.
What does it look like when a law firm fires — or tries to fire — a partner?
Well, that is even uglier….
Continue reading “Biglaw Blind Item: What Does It Look Like When A Partner Gets Fired?”
A prominent partner left his white-shoe law firm some time ago, purportedly for falsifying expenses. A juicy detail that is less widely known: some of the fake expenses were for what might be described as improper forms of entertainment.
(This blind item — relating to someone who left his firm prior to 2010 — has nothing to do with Ted Freedman, the former Kirkland & Ellis senior partner whose recent departure we covered last month. Please note the update we’ve appended near the end of our earlier post, quoting a source stating that Freedman simply retired.)
Actually, we’re not sure that it’s herpes; that’s just a guess, based on context clues. But apparently some prominent, white-shoe law firm has been hit by an outbreak of a sexually-transmitted disease.
Check out this Biglaw blind item….
No matter when it’s done, job hunting usually sucks balls. When done in the middle of the Great Recession, it feels like the balls are covered in tangled hair and pointy skin-piercing spikes. It’s painful and you have to be careful.
One disgruntled attorney recently emailed us about a company that he suspects is trying to take advantage of desperate job hunters. He calls it “a new type of scam preying on unemployed lawyers.”
He responded via an ad on Craigslist to an “assets management company” seeking IP attorneys for full-time or part-time contract work. We’ll call the company Pay To Work, LLC. In the ad, PTW says it’s looking for “entrepreneurial” attorneys to do intellectual property work. It says its clients include scientists, inventors, writers, artists, celebrities, universities, and multi-national corporations. That sounds pretty sweet!
But there are some big catches. First off, “partners” are supposed to pay $295/month for “administrative fees.” Second off, the company has no clients at the moment. It’s a start-up in the “set-up phase.” So if you sign up and start paying $300 a month, what exactly are you getting for your money?
I have been a lifelong cannabis user, on an almost daily basis since I was in high school. I am now the managing partner of a very successful law firm in the Washington, D.C. area.
I have been in a professional law practice for almost 27 years. I work 60+ hours a week, and all of that hard work has translated into high levels of annual income.
I still get high after work, almost every day….
– A marijuana-using managing partner (and parent of pot-smoking daughters), in an email to Andrew Sullivan.
Over the weekend, the New York Times took employers to task for taking advantage of university kids eager to get work experience. Unpaid internships abound, and the recession has made it easier for corporate employers to cry poor, and bring on free labor.
However, there are strict federal guidelines [PDF] around unpaid internships, and many are breaking the law by giving their eager little beavers noneducational menial work. The folks at the Labor Department are on to this devious scheme:
Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.
While most of the abusive internships are in the exciting worlds of fashion, film, media, and music, there was at least one poor NYU student suckered into cleaning out bathrooms for free at a law firm…
Continue reading “Blind Item: Law Firm Cutting Costs With Undergraduate Slave Labor?”
Working from home is one of the perks of living in the Internet age. The downside is that work more easily intrudes into the rest of your life. But being chained to your BlackBerry is better than being chained to your office chair.
A partner in the Miami office of an AmLaw 50 firm doesn’t like the idea of his associates being out on the beach with their BlackBerrys, though. He wants them in the office. He wants to see their faces, and the only tan he wants to see on them is the kind from the office’s fluorescent lights.
This partner whom we are not outing from a firm that we are not naming gave a speech last week that left many of his associates even less excited about spending time at the office than before…
Continue reading “Blind Item: Biglaw Partner Likes Your Faces”
We’ve provided extensive coverage of a recent Biglaw blind item, concerning an unidentified law firm in Manhattan planning multiple rounds of layoffs for later this year. If you’re tired of this little parlor game, then stop reading here.
But if you enjoy rampant speculation, surf over to Law Shucks, which has crunched the numbers again and generated a new list of likely layoff lairs. Some of the commenters on our last thread may be gratified to see their nominees on the updated list.
At this point, the law firm mentioned in the original Washington Post article should have the decency to come forward and ‘fess up. Is it fair to let your fellow firms sit under a cloud of suspicion?
Revisiting the Candidates for Impending Layoffs [Law Shucks]
Earlier:Blind Item: Layoffs To Come At ‘A Law Firm in Manhattan’
Blind Item Follow-Up: A New York Firm That Fits The Bill?
Blind Item Follow-Up: Morgan Lewis Also Denies Layoffs
Based on a Washington Post article profiling the Five O’Clock Club, an outplacement and career coaching company, we constructed a Biglaw blind item:
Which New York law firm, having already completed two rounds of layoffs, has hired the Five O’Clock Club to help it carry out additional layoffs (in August, October, and November)?
After we ran the item, several firms came forward to declare they’re not the firm in question. And now they’re joined by one more: Morgan, Lewis & Bockius.
A spokesperson for Morgan Lewis contacted ATL to say that it isn’t the firm with layoffs in the works. In fact, Morgan Lewis claims that it shouldn’t even be on the shortlist of contenders.
Read why — and check out the list of the Five O’Clock Club’s clients, including some very prestigious law firms that haven’t publicly admitted to layoffs — after the jump.
On Monday, we tossed out a blind item about future layoffs at a Manhattan law firm, mentioned in the Washington Post as a client of the Five O’Clock Club, an outplacement firm. On Tuesday, with the help of Law Shucks, we narrowed down the list of suspects.
We’re happy to report that we can advance the ball on this. Three firms should be cleared of suspicion:
1. Dewey & LeBoeuf: A spokesperson from D&L stated that it is not the firm in question and has no layoff plans.
2. Schulte Roth & Zabel: A spokesperson from SRZ stated that it is not the firm in question and has not hired a layoff consultant or outplacement consultant.
3. White & Case: A reader pointed out to us that White & Case is listed as a Five O’Clock Club client (PDF). [Update: Looks like the client list has been removed, but we downloaded it; check it out here.]
This caused us to wonder if White & Case might be the firm at issue. But White & Case denies it.
Yesterday, we wrote about a Washington Post article profiling a layoff consultant who advises companies on conducting mass firings. The article caught our attention because one of those who called Kim Hall of the Five O’Clock Club during the course of the article was a “law firm in Manhattan,” planning a third round of layoffs in August with more to come in the fall.
We invited you to speculate as to the identity of the firm. Law Shucks (the layoff tracking blog with whom we frequently “team up“) compared the information in the article with data from the Layoff Tracker:
Here’s the list of law firms in Manhattan that have had two layoffs (we’re assuming layoffs of lawyers) reported this year:
* Dewey & LeBoeuf
* Fish & Richardson
* Loeb & Loeb
* Mayer Brown
* Morgan Lewis & Bockius
* Schulte Roth & Zabel
* White & Case
Further speculation and narrowing of the list over at Law Shucks.
Handicapping the Next Layoff [Law Shucks]
Earlier: Blind Item: Layoffs To Come At ‘A Law Firm in Manhattan’
The Washington Post had an article this weekend on Kim Hall of the Five O’Clock Club, who makes her living on layoffs. She advises companies on how to fire employees en masse and also offers guidance to the newly unemployed workers. At $2,000 per severanced head.
The article describes a “day in the life” of Kim Hall and discusses how her business is booming in the recession. Her company has doubled in size in the past two years. Scavenger, much?
The article caught our attention because during the day that the journalist trailed and interviewed Hall, she got a call from a Manhattan firm planning layoffs later this year.
Continue reading “Blind Item: Layoffs To Come At ‘A Law Firm in Manhattan’”
Late last month, we heard reports that one prominent law firm was not complying with the hiring rules and timetable set forth by the National Association for Law Placement (NALP). More specifically, we heard that this firm was refusing to follow NALP’s 45-day rule for accepting offers of summer employment. Rather, the firm was giving students only two weeks to accept or decline offers (and planning to take that approach for the entire cycle of on-campus interviewing this fall).
Why have we decided to run this as a blind item? We understand that, since the time of the original reports, the firm in question has moved into compliance, setting aside its original plan to ignore the NALP timetable this year.
But this does raise a question: In light of the grim economy and the current turmoil in the legal job market, should the NALP rules be revised in any way, or perhaps temporarily suspended for this year?
We’re working on a longer post about this very subject. If you have views on the issue, feel free to opine in the comments, or email us (subject line: “NALP Rules”). Thanks.
Ed. note: This post is authored by Evan Jowers and Robert Kinney of Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past five years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com
Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December.
As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / China), please note that thus far in January ’12, we have already made seven US associate and counsel placements in Asia. This is an especially impressive number, considering the biglaw lateral hiring market in Asia is down right now (see state of the market brief overview below). These new placements are of new hires in Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, who were interviewing with their new firm for a month or more and they are spread out among different practice areas, including project finance, litigation, fund formation, M&A and cap markets. We are close on four additional new associate placements, in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Shanghai, that we expect to close soon. We do not discuss partner placements in these articles, but the pace of partner recruitment in Asia (a large part of our business) has continued.
Hedge Fund In-House Openings in Hong Kong
We are seeing a small run of new in-house openings in Hong Kong at hedge funds. We are currently filling three different in-house positions at three different hedge funds in Hong Kong, two of these searches we are handling on an exclusive basis. All three will most likely be filled by a US associate, with about 4 to 6 years of experience. Mandarin not required. Candidates from NYC and London will be considered, but at one of these funds the new hire will likely come from Hong Kong / China or Singapore (with HK being the strong preference).
Please feel free to reach out to us at asia@kinneyrecruiting.com if you are interested in these hedge fund openings. As you probably would expect, the competition for these spots will be fierce and the funds will be very selective when choosing which candidates to interview.
In 2009, a small group of Harvard Law School students noticed an absurd monopoly in the bar prep space, held by an unchallenged leader with a non-evolving product. In response, these students teamed up with Harvard Law alumni to launch BarMax on January 14, 2010.
The mission: democratize bar prep by embracing new technologies to provide the very best bar exam review courses at a fraction of the cost normally associated with these courses.
Since then, with the encouragement of thousands of students and an unwavering commitment to their success, BarMax has established itself as a comprehensive alternative to the stagnant, over-priced status quo.
As we continue to expand, we do not want to lose sight of the basic premises that led us to create BarMax in the first place. If you are a law student who believes that there is something fundamentally wrong with being forced to take out yet another loan to pay for a $4,000 bar exam prep course, you are not alone.
